


On the other hand, it's better than starving...

by BlackPrism



Series: Arms full of consequences [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horrortale, Blood and Gore, HorrorTale Sans, Horrortale Papyrus, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:30:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackPrism/pseuds/BlackPrism
Summary: You fall into an Underground, a small child had left only a short time ago.But a lot of things can change with time.





	On the other hand, it's better than starving...

**Author's Note:**

> For the amazing Matronofthevoid over on Tumblr.  
> They wanted some reader and Horrortale brothers, meeting and..well, I don't want to spoil the story here :)
> 
>  
> 
> I write stuff over on Tumblr if you're interested: https://bonelynomore.tumblr.com/

A child returned from the cursed mountain, most people feared, unharmed, telling tales of monsters and fights, of kings and flowers. But nobody believed them. Nobody listened. Yes, people went to the mountain, some hoping to find what really was there, what really scared that child, nobody believing it was real, actual monsters. But nobody else returned. 

Of course, that didn’t stop you from climbing that mountain, so many years after you first heard the tales. 

So many years after you heard and believed them. The tales of monsters, skeletons, flowers. You heard the fairytales as a kid, always fell asleep, dreaming of one day finding the monsters, befriending them. Like a lot of people of your age, you had a...certain interest in creatures that were not human. At least in one way or another.

Yes. You were climbing the mountain to woo a monster. And you were damn proud of that!

The fall into the mountain wasn't planned. You tumbled through a hole, landing on a patch of flowers, sneezing as the pollen tickled your nose.  
The tunnels and caverns afterwards where barren. Rotten leafs, wilted plants, broken buildings, fine layers of dust.

You found an old house, empty but still..warm. Somebody still lived there but you didn't hang around to meet them. You searched for a way to leave and found an old, large door in the basement. 

And then you were outside. Or at least you thought so for a moment. But no, you were still inside the mountain, snow was falling from the ceiling like in a strange dream.

You crunched through the strangely grey snow. Not like it got dirty or polluted. More like...it had lost its sparkle, like all of your surroundings.  
A dark, dim, grey forest. Everything seemed so..sad and desolated. Like it could have been a Christmassy, cheery, wonderful place. But only in a different lifetime.

You crunched through the snow as you suddenly...heard another pair of footsteps. Right behind you. Crunching slowly, in sync with your own.

You walked faster. And so did the footsteps. You started jogging. The footsteps kept walking. But they still followed you at the same distance. You started running and the footsteps stopped.  
Instead of footsteps, a shadowy figure suddenly appeared in front of you, making you stop short in your tracks.

“ ‘sup”, the skeleton in front of you, said. A real, moving, living skeleton. A broken skull, on a broad body, oversized, bloody clothes hanging off of him. You couldn't help but scream. 

The skeleton in front of you flinched at that, his eerie grin faltering for a moment, before returning in full, terrifying force.

“don’t you know...you shouldn’t scream at new pals….”, he took a few steps towards you, making you back away. This wasn't the kind of monster you hoped to meet.

Then you noticed the knife in his hand. Bloody, used, large, but sharp. You would die. You would die here and just be another face amidst all those missing person flyers. Just another person who got lost on the mountain.

But you wouldn’t die today. You didn't know it yet, but you would live.

“hm...you know...usually i wouldn't even talk to you, after all, you are not s’possed to play with your food, but..”, he stretched, his eyelights twinkled as you backed away more, your eyes glued to his knife, now high up in the air.

“...i’m feeling rather lazy today. and hey, my bro, papyrus’ been feeling down lately, seeing a human like you would really cheer him up.”

You kind of wished now that he wasn't feeling too lazy today. A knife to the throat sounded less painful than whatever you would have to do to entertain his brother.

He grinned wider. He was playing with you. He was bored, not lazy. And you didn't know if that scared or relieved you. Was this a chance to survive, or a guarantee to die slower than you would have otherwise? You couldn’t imagine what he and his brother would do with you for their amusement.

And your answer arrived in the form of hurried footsteps, sprinting closer and a booming voice calling out from just out of your sight.

“SANS? SANS, WHY AREN’T YOU AT YOUR STATION! UNDYNE WILL BE ANGRY IF SHE FINDS OUT!”

Sans. Was that the skeleton in front of you? He reacted like it was his name, so you were probably right.

Sans turned to the source of the voice, an even more horrifying skeleton, tall, jagged bones under ripped clothes, bloody teeth, large, staring eyes.

You barely suppressed another scream, only even trying because of the glare the smaller, Sans, threw in your direction. 

“hey bro. don’t worry ’bout undyne and come here. got something for you.”

Papyrus, the tall, lanky one, sprinted faster, skidding to a halt in front of you two, panting a bit as he looked at Sans, and you, then back at Sans. His eyebrows raised a bit.

“SANS? WHY IS THE HUMAN STILL….WHOLE?”

You shuddered at that. Whole? What did they usually do with humans? What was the fate of those others that got lost under the mountain?  
Sans chuckled.

“well, you’ve been complaining ‘bout not having anybody to test your new puzzles, so…”

Papyrus eye sockets twinkled with delight, and your stomach turned in fear.

“OH! BROTHER! THIS IS BRILLIANT! THIS IS GREAT! THIS IS….”, he was dancing on the spot, his arms flailing wildly in all directions as he looked at you with childish glee. You swallowed hard. Oh god, what kind of puzzles would a creature like him have made?

“BUT...but….”, Papyrus stopped dancing, sobering up as he looked you up and down, his voice going quietly.

“We...we need the food, don’t we? I shouldn’t….We should…”, he was wringing his hands together, his gaze not meeting his brothers.  
You started to back away slowly. Food? Did he just say food? Where they about to eat you? You turned and ran, unable to think straight in your panic.

A wall of bones appeared in front of you, all jagged, bloody and strangely brittle looking, and you slammed into it face first, unable to stop in time. Sans voice was right beside you as you picked yourself up from the floor.

“ya wanna live, don’tcha?”, his voice was low, and you didn’t have to see his face to know that he was dead serious.  
“then play along, and maybe you can leave?”

You didn’t believe him. You knew he would probably just kill you as soon as his brother got bored of you. But it would give you time, and more time was something you couldn’t turn down at the moment.

“Fine.”, you spat at him, just because you were going straight to your doom, didn’t mean you couldn’t be snarky. Sans chuckled lowly at that, watching you get up and walk back to Papyrus, not moving, not walking along you to keep you from escaping. But the fact that he was suddenly beside Papyrus, without making a single step showed you, that he could stop you anytime he wanted to. You couldn’t run far.

“OH, THERE YOU ARE AGAIN, HUMAN! I WAS ALREADY WORRIED, YOU RAN IN THE WRONG DIRECTION! NOW FOLLOW ME!”

And with slow, heavy, dragging steps, you followed him to what you were sure, were the last moments of your life.

\------

The puzzles were something strange. A maze, electric and invisible. Looking like it once was harmless, but the voltage was turned up into dangerous levels, the ground only recently burned, littered with small, smoking corpses. You shuddered as you took your first step, feeling Sans burning gaze on you. You couldn’t run, you couldn’t go back. You could only walk forwards and hope.

Somehow, like through a miracle, you made it through. The walls had left burn marks on the ground, after zapping so many others. You thanked them silently for making the maze visible, at least partly.

Papyrus was ecstatic.

“YOU MADE IT! YOU DID IT! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS THAT SOMEBODY MADE IT TO THE SECOND PUZZLE!”, and off he ran, Sans, staying behind, keeping a close eye on you.

The second puzzle. There was a second puzzle. Yes, of course, there was, he did say puzzles after all. But it still felt like a punch to the gut. Would you survive another one of these?

The next one was made out of switches, arranged to look like a skull, like Papyrus skull, but..softer. Like he would look like without those broken, jagged teeth and insane eyes. The way was blocked by a barrier of spikes. You couldn’T go forwards, you couldn’t go back. You had to either solve this or stay here and freeze to death.

“SADLY THIS ONE ISN’T A NEW ONE. IT FROZE YEARS AGO, AND I COULDN’T REARRANGE IT ANY OTHER WAY SINCE THEN!”

You took a step towards the switches, carefully tapping the first one with your foot, it changed from an O to an X, and immediately spikes shoot up out of the ground. You barely have time to react, barely manage to jump away, falling into the snow backwards.  
That as close. To close. But at least you now knew what to do, and what to expect.

You moved from tile to tile, sprinting over three in a row faster then you have ever ran anywhere, tapping the other ones, before jumping away again. The spikes nicked your legs and feet a few times, and soon you were leaving red blotches in the snow.  
But then you were done. The last tile changed, and the barrier blocking your way lowered.

You didn’t even feel relief this time, dreading the next puzzle.  
More spikes, slippery ice that almost made you slide into your doom, a dark, deep pit that smelled like death. More spikes. Flamethrowers. Knives and blades. A Junior Jumble, covered with bloody fingerprints, and a timer. One of the words didn’t fit, it wasn’t there, just a similar one, off by one letter.  
You still managed to survive, jumping out of the way of the bear trap and finding the source of the bloody fingerprints.

You were just glad it counted as solving it, Sans wide grin suggested that he never planned for you or anybody to solve it, only to dodge out of the trap at the right moment. Just to see you shriek and jump. You felt sick. But you already had come so far, you couldn’t give up now.

The last puzzle was a bridge, deadly traps hanging over it on ropes, like on nooses. One was empty, white fur and rot stuck to it like something died and rotted on it, before finally falling apart into a mush and down into the abyss below.

You stood there, waiting for the traps to turn on, to slice you to pieces at your first step onto the bridge. But...nothing happened.  
Papyrus was standing there, on the other side of the bridge, mumbling something to Sans, who finally lost his grin, looking rather...unhappy for once.

“I can’t do it brother..:”, Papyrus voice was quiet, but you could still hear it drift over to you.  
“not again. you can’t let every human get through this one without turning it on.”  
“But...but this….it’s unfair! There is no real puzzle here, just deadly traps without a solution.”  
“yes. that’s the point. slice ‘em up and eat’em.”

“NO.”, Papyrus voice was louder this time, sounding final. Not allowing another argument. Sans walked away, throwing one last look of malcontent in your direction, before disappearing from your sight. Literally dissolving from one step to another.

And now you and Papyrus were alone.

\------

Only about an hour later you were sitting on a green, lumpy couch, unable to fully believe what just happened.  
You just couldn’t believe that you were not only alive, and patched up, but also….safe? At least you felt safe, for now. 

Papyrus had confessed to you how much your skill in solving puzzles and surviving them had impressed him. That you were the first to make it through all of them and to The Gauntlet of Deadly Terror, how he called the bridge. It didn’t really surprise you, you saw enough corpses and blood strewn over his puzzles, and how the last few ones where incredibly clean in contrast to the first few. Nobody died there, because nobody even made it till there.

But what surprised you was that he let you skip the last one, which you wouldn’t have survived. That he declared you his friend and dragged you into a town, only minutes away from the bridge. You saw how monsters there looked at you. Like a tasty snack. Like a well done piece of meat. But nobody did anything, acting like it was perfectly normal for Papyrus to drag a human into town.

Maybe it was. 

But now you where sitting here, on this couch, Papyrus putting away an old, beaten, first aid kit, which he used to bandage the bruises and cuts on your legs. He gave you a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs with a strange sauce, noodles the colour of charred flesh.  
Hunger and fear made you do strange things, and you felt like you haven’t eaten in days. Hungry and afraid you would seem rude and get cast out into the town full of hungry monsters, you ate the whole bowl.

And that is how your stay in the skeletons house began. And it became easier to eat, what could have once been your neighbour, or mail man, with each meal.

\------

You soon learned that, even though everybody down here had at least killed one human, and everybody hadn’t eaten anything but human flesh in years, they were not the terrible, cruel and violent monsters you thought they were.

They were starving, desperate, scared. Trying to survive, every kill twisting them a bit farther until they didn’t mind it anymore.

You learned that Papyrus had once been a puzzle enthusiast, that he wanted to be part of the Royal guard, and ended up being a junior sentry…..but now his best friend became violent and cruel, his dreams shattered.

You two grew close like siblings over weeks and months. He showed you puzzles, you two solving them as a team. You cooked together after a while. Papyrus always made sure the meat was already cut up when you joined him, so you wouldn’t have to see one of your own kind, still whole and dead.  
It was hard for you at first, but like eating the food you knew was made out of human flesh, it became easier with each time. You started to understand the monsters on another level after a while.

And one day you ended up helping Papyrus cut up a body into pieces, Papyrus shoving you excitedly where to cut, and how to do that. How to break the bones to get the marrow out. How to break them into small pieces that will fit into a pot and could be cooked into a soup. How to get the skin off, and how to cook even that. Remove the hair. And also cook that.

You saw how he smiled, but how he seemed more...hollow...drained afterwards. And you felt it too. Like a part of your soul stayed in the shed that held all those wrapped pieces of flesh.

And while you and Papyrus grew closer, you and Sans remained rather….far apart. 

You knew he was still looking at you the same way he did when he found you alive and well on his couch. He wasn’t surprised, apparently, he expected Papyrus to spare you. But he wasn’t happy with it.  
But after a while, he opened up a bit to you. You knew it was just for Papyrus sake. Papyrus wanted you two to get along after all. But it was better than nothing.  
And for a strange reason, you started to fall for Sans. Maybe because you understood him more and more with each meal out of human flesh, with every body you had cut into small pieces.  
You heard him dream, bad dreams, Papyrus comforting him every time. You dreamt yourself. So did Papyrus.

And you all were there for each other, every time. You knew Sans didn’t like you in the house, or around him. Knew he wanted you to be cut up like those other bodies. But he was there with a mug of hot water in his hands, tea long a rarity nobody could afford any longer, every time you woke up crying and gasping. Papyrus was there physically, but Sans never left either.

And you couldn’t help it after all that. Like a teenager crushing on a bad boy, they shouldn’t date.  
You just wished he wouldn’t keep you around as spare meat. Because you knew it, as soon as he felt that you humoured his brother enough, he would drag you into that shed and only he would leave again.

\------

Spring turned to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, and the food became scarce. Of course it did, the mountain was dangerous, and all those missing people were already scaring off so many hikers. And now the cold and slippery ice on top of that. Barely anybody went up there anymore in autumn, and after the first day of fresh snow, coming from the surface, not a single body fell down.

Nobody had food left, autumn had already forced you to eat those pieces of meat far inside the freezer, the ones for the hungry days. And now you had nothing left, and nobody new was falling.

Things were getting desperate. The brothers didn’t let you outside anymore, and to be honest...you were too afraid to leave anyway. You heard the fighting from inside, monsters killing each other to at least have dust to eat, at least something.  
And you saw the brothers change too. Papyrus became listless, exhausted. You had never seen him exhausted. This has been the first winter since things went so very, very wrong. And it seemed to be the last one for most down here.

Sans changed too. He was barely moving anymore, not even going up to his room anymore. You knew he gave most of his food to Papyrus, he was already half starved before winter begun. And now he was barely there, to exhausted to even walk up the stairs. 

And you couldn’t let them starve. Not after what they did for you. Not after they gave you some of their food, even when they barely had any themselves. Not after they hid you, protected you.  
Not after you learned to love them both, one like a brother, and one like...something more.

You went to the shed, sneaking in the safety of the dark night. Papyrus taught you enough about cutting up meat, this shouldn’t be too hard. You picked up the sharpest blade, a large knife, the same one Sans usually carried around with him. Then you rolled up your sleeve and bit your tongue.

The first cut in your upper arm was agony. So was the second. The blade tore through your skin in one stroke, ripping some of the fat beneath, catching a few strands of muscle. The muscle was harder to tear trough, then the skin. The blade was the sharpest there, but it wasn’t good. It had dulled down after being used for so many bodies.

You ripped the muscle more than you cut it, the blood making your grip on the knife slippery and unsteady. You kept slipping off, kept cutting other parts of your arm, your torso. Soon your shirt was soaked, blood dripping down your arm in small, crimson rivers. 

Then you reached the bone, and things became ten times more painful. You started to become numb to the pain after a while, all the tearing and blood loss making you dizzy and feel far away from your body. But the moment you hit bone, you were back and presents with a choked scream.

It was hell, splintering away at the bone painfully slow, cutting through it, the pain jolting through your entire body, the vibrations of the knife going up to your neck and down to your fingers. You felt sick, you felt the shock settle back in, you felt cold and scared.

But you kept going.

And with a hit of the knife and a snap, you severe the bone. You screamed hoarsely, more out of reflex then actual pain, your entire body numb again, everything feeling unreal, your vision darkening at the edges.

Your arm was hanging on only inches of meet, sinuses and skin, but it wouldn’t rip off, just hanging there, tearing slowly, sending a strong, dull pain through your shoulder and arm. You couldn’t aim properly anymore, you couldn’t cut properly, so you started hacking the flesh, hitting it with the shiny, wet knife, blood splattering on the dirty walls.

And then, with a ripping sound and a thump, your arm fell to the ground. You followed shortly, falling to your knees. Your head was swimming, the blood now pouring down onto the ground. You had to stop the blood, you had to stay alive.

You pulled out a belt you borrowed and brought in here with yourself, tying it around the small part of your upper arm that was still left, pulling it tight. Soon the blood flow, slowed down to a trickle and you bandaged the wound with an old t-shirt, Papyrus lend you.  
It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good. But it was keeping the blood in your body, and that was all that mattered right now.

You picked up your arm, taking it by the hand and laughing hysterically at shaking your own hand, tears falling from your eyes at what you had done, but you couldn’t stop laughing. It took you hours to calm down, hours you managed to stay alive, your wound slowly drying, the blood flow barely soaking through the shirt anymore.

Then you took your arm with an empty feeling in your chest and left the shed.

\------

You had already cooked arms before, this wasn’t your first time. But you kept flinching as you cut it into pieces, felt bile rise up in your throat as you saw it cook slowly in the boiling water.  
You cleaned up while it cooked, managing to sneak past Sans and Papyrus, both of them lying on the couch, eye sockets closed. You put on a shirt Papyrus lend to you, stuffing another one into the empty sleeve, the t-shirt and belt still tied around the rest of your arm.

You called the brothers, both walking in like like puppets on cut strings. But the smell of food made them more lively, they were already wolfing down the meat before you managed to even put the plates on the table, Sans somehow managing to still give some of his to Papyrus, even though he was barely coherent anymore.

The small amount of food was soon gone, and both brothers looked at you sitting there without a plate, one of your arms hanging down limply.

“AREN’T YOU EATING HUMAN?”, of course, Papyrus would be worried about you.

“yeah kid, you should eat some too. don’t think you had much to eat yourself..”, but you were surprised at Sans worried tone. Why did he care? You were just spare meat.

But...maybe you weren’t. He hasn’t even tried to lay a finger on you, even when all three of you were slowly starving for weeks on end. He was there when you needed him...and he had stopped throwing those glances at you.

You smiled to yourself. He cared about you. And you helped him. You helped both of them.

“I’m….not really hungry, already ate some of it while cooking.”, you got up on shaky legs, your vision darkening slowly. You just wanted to lie down.

“HUMAN? ARE YOU FEELING ALRIGHT?”, Papyrus hand was on your shoulder, a gentle pat, holding you in place.

A gentle, soft pat. But enough to shake the shirt out of your sleeve.

A loud, sharp, piercing silence filled the kitchen as the soaked, bloody piece of fabric fell to the floor with a wet sound. Chairs scraped, the brothers shouted as you soon followed, your vision going completely black and your body falling deeper and deeper and deeper.


End file.
